Share this:

Man, I guess some of you lot saw that on the E3 livestream, but that was fairly awesome. The player fighting with a giant, which was then carried off and dropped to Earth by a Dragon. Spectacular. Other stuff: factions/guild returning, “three hundred hours” of game. And it sounds like you will be able to talk to the dragons. Or some of them, anyway. Great stuff.

Also: mammoths! Sorry, but I am nerding pretty heavily over here. Also scheduling some announcements for later. One of them is bananas (about 11:30 tonight UK time.)

57 Comments

“The next Elder Scrolls is going to be the one that really satisfies me as an RPG gamer” is something I’ve been saying since Daggerfall way back in 1996, and my prediction has never quite turned out to be accurate (looking at the extended family of very obviously ES-related titles, New Vegas arguably came the closest but that was Obsidian and not Bethsoft). Just for the sake of tradition, though, I have to say that the next Elder Scrolls is going to be the one that really satisfies me as an RPG gamer.

Looks promising, possibly as a game unto itself and certainly as a platform for some brilliant modding. I worry a bit about the lack of statistical substance, but trust that won’t be too difficult to fix. The world itself looks genuinely compelling, so that’s encouraging.

Funny, I was just thinking 300 seemed a little on the small side for a TES game. How many hours was Morrowind advertised to be, anyone remember? I got better than a thousand out of it, I hope I’ll be able to do the same here (over the course of many years and many mods, of course).

apparently, there are dragons with whom the player can converse. Wikipedia redirects to this interview with Todd Howard (link to gameinformer.com) with a beautiful musical intro (with the theme of Oblivion recurring – no wait, it actually looks like the PotC theme, darnit!).
directly from Wikipedia:
“The legendary dragons have a particular influence on gameplay and story, and are a challenging opponent for the player. Different races of dragons are encountered throughout Skyrim, either alone or in small groups. They can speak directly to the player character in the world’s native language of Draconic. Dragons can attack cities and towns at random, “merrily [ravaging] towns without warning”; often, dragons nose-dive to the ground, march through city streets and breathe fire, which engulfs and causes significant damage to city structures. Not every dragon will be hostile, and some can be communicated with.”

promising!
the flying animation still looks a bit weird, though. at least the design is good and convincing, too often dragons look like dumb agressive beasts.
I can’t wait to wander through pine forests and suddenly hearing the low beating of a dragon approaching and seeing its shadow pass over you. epic!

Looks the same as Oblivion. Or Fallcrap 3. Identical gameplay, only the graphics and animations are more shiny – and they focus on it in this presentation, instead of actual role-playing, knowing they have nothing to show there.
Like all Bethesda games – nice tech demo, shiny graphics, large world to grind in, no actual content, laughable writing, no choices to make. Your average FPS loving dude will enjoy it, MMO fans will enjoy it since it’s more of the same, people who actually play some decent RPGs will yawn trying to actually find something to do in this game other than killing stuff and exploring every corner hoping to find something interesting other than rocks or plants. 300 hours of gameplay? LOL, sure. I can do nothing in World of Warcraft for 300 hours, too.
You know this game will be like this, don’t deny it. I’ve installed hundreds of mods for Oblivion and still always fall asleep after a few hours of wandering pointlessly around.
But hey, it’ll win RPG OF TEH YEAR awards anyway. Bioware’s and Bethesda’s games always do, regardless of quality.

I guess this is a lot of people hoping things change.
though Fallout 3 (FallOUT! you got it wrong there) really was one of the best games I’ve played. ever. it had a lot to do with the ambience (e.g. listening to The Inkspots while sneaking up on some raiders. must’ve been in-ear plugs, come to think of it).
but Oblvion was indeed boring: it shone and was colourful like a girl’s barbie collection, the story was trite, the environments unconvincing and the people.. God, the ‘people’!

@gorgol – actully, I DID play Morrowind. And Arena. And Daggerfall. Morrowind was a dumbed down Daggerfall, Oblivion was a dumbed down Morrowind.
Daggerfall is the best TES game to date, though still nowhere near my favourite RPGs.
@lokanaan
Fallcrap 3 isn’t worthy of having anything in common with one of the best RPGs of all time, even the title.

Bethesda games have always put the setting before the story–I’m not sure why you expected something different. They’re intended to allow the player to feel like they’re actually living in a world, and while they do have their faults, they do a far better job of this than many RPGs, which have a great story, but make the player feel like they’re just reading through someone else’s lines. Commander Shepard never felt like “my” character, but my Dunmer woodsman in Oblivion certainly did.

Somewhere along the line, the term RPG came to mean stat blocks and dialogue wheels instead of actually playing a role. This is strange to me. A good Dungeons and Dragons session isn’t the players constantly checking their character sheets, it’s exploring and talking and doing whatever the hell you want, maybe with a good fight or two thrown in. The Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3 both do an excellent job of portraying that experience, and if that’s not your cup of tea, so be it, but they excel at what they do.

Khemm, hmm, fair enough, but at least it looks like this will be less dumbed down than Oblivion. The fighting and exploration elements, coupled with the graphics and animation make it interesting enough to be worth a try. It also looks like it has good character development. Further, if I’m not mistaken they are using new technology designed to make characters and quests interesting and dynamic.

I’m no fan boy, and I also disliked Oblivion and Fallout 3, but this game has me interested and excited. Which is very unusual in me for a big name title these days.

It was sort of disappointing when I looked at one of the other games I’m looking forward to, Arkham City–the animations for Catwoman felt so empty and hollow and tacked on. But this looks incredible; it of seems like what Oblivion was advertised as. Battlefield 3 is also looking better and better to me. It has it’s own visual edge whereas Call of Duty seems to be going for raw graphical power … of course, that could be mostly the trailers being well edited for one and poorly edited for the other. Overall, games seem to be going more for the design than the raw power at this E3, which excites me. Maybe the age of endless upgrades will finally end.